Semipop Life: Open up your mouth and feed it

Mannequin Pussy, Romulo Fróes, Sheer Mag, Corook, and more!

A Moi La Liberté: Early Electronic Raï Algérie 1983-90

A major collection that fills out my understanding of the genre, with big names rubbing shoulders with others whose work survives only on a handful of 7-inches or cassettes, like Chab Hamouda, the skankier of the reggaeists on here, or Tchier Abdelghani, whose “Laâroussa Jate” is relentless. Among the stars is Bollywood fan Cheb Hindi, whose comp-titling track clips its keyboard bass and drapes some guitar heroics over the top, anticipating Rachid Taha’s hard raï. But there are other approaches to the music (described in depth if in dubious translation on the Bandcamp), some very pop. Child star Mohamed Sghir duels with squalling-yet-dinky synth accompaniment, as if the era’s true teen idol might’ve been a cheap-except-in-dinars Casio. Many tracks take brazen pride in sounding artificial, such that a singer needs good posture to avoid being overshadowed. Most stand up straight, not least Chaba Fadela, represented by 1983’s “Kii Kount Ouelite”, where the ersatz bassline drags the whole backing into contempt for diatonic tuning. Pro that she is, Fadela sings her song all the same.

Grade: A MINUS (“A moi la liberté”, “Khalouni”, “Laâroussa Jate”)

Mannequin Pussy: I Got Heaven

Not sure why the quants are measuring this as MP’s masterpiece—sounds to me like more of the same as Patience, with a little more sonic variety and no “Drunk II”. To be clear, more of the same is still very, very good. The primary question the record addresses is how to retain one’s heaven when everything’s flawed, not least organized religion. Their answer’s apparent on the opening title track: you can be angry and pretty. While that’s basically the album, it’s very well plotted and paced. When the mid-tempo “Softly” dangles the possibility of fulfillment, it hits like its name; it’s followed by a big-riffing one that shouts about second-hand control. I appreciate producer John Congleton souping up the rhythm section and Marisa Dabice deciding that the hardcorest track is the ideal moment to do her Valley Girl impersonation. Even her best lyrics contain a platitude or a ruff canine figure of speech, but she and her band retain a real range of feeling and musicality. And as long as lawmakers from 1864 are asserting supremacy over women’s bodies, there’s merit in them demonstrating their power. Given that, forget masterpieces: a masterpussy may be more valuable.

Grade: A MINUS (“Softly”, “Of Her”, “Nothing Like”)

Romulo Fróes & Tiago Rosas: Na Goela

Brazil Beat Blog published a long appreciation of this a year ago, and like everyone else I ignored it, perhaps because calling it “an alt-samba 154” didn’t sound like my cup of mate. However, Rod’s comparison turns out to be more analogical than sonic. Well-connected oddball Fróes had a heck of 2016 and hadn’t done anything that stuck with me since until this; Rosas is a more conventional singer-songwriter who started collaborating with Fróes during the pandemic. With a crack band (Guilherme Held, Marcelo Cabral, Lucas Fixel), there are deep grooves, yet at three minutes a song they don’t persist for long. The art is less in moments of grace or virtuosity and more in an atmosphere not devoid of airborne viruses. The unison vocals downplay harmony in favor of a subterranean ominousness. It pays to run the lyrics (available on Bandcamp) through a translator, and maybe to have someone tell you that the “Geni” getting literally stoned is a character from a Chico Buarque song. As so often in recent Brazilian music, Bolsonaro is the unnamed looming presence; they toss a few rocks at his zeppelin as it sputters off.

Grade: A MINUS (“Um Por Um”, “Tempo Morto”, “Os Herdeiros do Antes”)

Sheer Mag: Playing Favorites

The boys (gender-inclusive) are back in town. Kyle Seely re-emerges as a major guitarist: he and rhythm player Matt Palmer lay down chunk-a-lunk riffs that could’ve driven some ’70s fluke hit—in addition to Thin Lizzy, I also hear plenty of the South and even El Lay in there—and his leads have the Big Dick Energy (again, gender-inclusive) to stand out even when they inch towards prog and/or when Mdou Moctar shows up. Now you might be wondering why this would be of interest to what seems like Substack’s only classic rock skeptical column, and the answer is Christina Halladay, who’s gained the confidence in her songs to shade them emotionally without going full bore all the time, not that the overall impression lacks volume or attitude. Meals are shared with true friends, exes are farewelled after one last non-literal meal, human and natural cycles are paid homage to. “Sometimes a high riding woman’s got no choice/But to be a son of a bitch,” and she is, but that’s not all she is.

Grade: A MINUS (“Eat It and Beat It”, “Tea on the Kettle”, “Moonstruck”)

Afrika Muye Muye! Tanzanian Rumba & Muziki Wa Dansi 1968-1970

Afropop lifers’ main complaint about this comp will be that they’ve heard many tracks before—Nuta Jazz’s “Amina” was on the CD of Africa Dances, for instance. Whatever you have or haven’t heard, this is classic music in fine sound quality, with translations, even, by compiler Werner Graebner. Nuta Jazz (named for the National Union of Tanganyika), who get five of the 17 tracks, were pioneers in the African brass sound that comes so close to actually hitting the notes, as well as in decentralized socialism. The Morogoro Jazz Band, led by the great guitarist Mbaraka Mwinshehe, adopted the Cuban syncopations refurbished by Franco and others to their west, while singing melodies that owed something to the taarab tradition and Arabic music. Atomic Jazz Band are one of the liveliest combos, with saxophonist John Mbula playing fetching solos in tune, dammit, and Steven Hiza singing “If you don’t try, later you can only blame yourself.”

Grade: A MINUS (“Nimechoka”, “Njoo Mpenzi Njoo”, “Mpenzi Sofia”)

Corook: Best of Corook (So Far) (2022)

After reviewing Serious Person (Part 1) last year, I put off going back to this because a full dose of Corook seemed like a whole lot of sweetness. Well, it is and it’s delicious. The breakout inspirational hit “It’s OK!” isn’t a coup like their subsequent breakout inspirational-and-fish-themed hit, but this album is as consistent as greatest hits should be. “Bad Friend” gets the most heartbreaking backstory out of the way; after that, it’s not hard to see glimmers of hope in the darkness. Even “The Dog”, on which they imagine the breakup of a relationship that clearly means the world to them, is designed to ward off evil spirits who might make that happen. While the backing is simple, there’s variety in the performances, from imitating Corook’s Dad leaving a voicemail telling them to yip-yip-mum-mum-get-a-job to pitch-correction in lieu of BDSM just for something new. They might not mind being bored; they’re never being boring.

Grade: A MINUS (“Bad Friend”, “The Dog”, “BDSM”)

Lloyiso: Seasons EP

At this point, I have to concede that Sam Smith changed soul singing and lots of people just sound like that now. Accepting that, South African talent show discovery Lloyiso might be the most promising young male R&B singer to come to recent prominence. More natural than Smith, he has an exceptionally smooth falsetto and a compatible modal voice, and he keeps his syllables distinct. Extreme vocal nerds who italicize words like passaggio might note that his transitions aren’t optimal, but at 24 at time of this EP’s release, he has time. The strength of the much-love-some-inspirationalism content isn’t in bromides like “I’ll love you till the morning comes/I’ll love you till my heart runs out of blood”; it’s in how when he sings it, he stacks a second ascending phrase on top of the first to prove commitment, reserving his highest notes for the backing vocals. Still, the standout is the one souped up by Stargate; UniMoth (SA division) should shell out for the song doctoring required for an international push.

Grade: A MINUS (“Run”, “What Would I Say”, “Give a Little Kindness”)

Mon Laferte: Autopoiética

A nonlinear memoir and a genre grab-bag that, in celebration of her new Mexican citizenship, opens with “Tenochtitlán”, a strings-and-beats simmerer that’s about… come on, it’s Laferte, it’s about oppression (bad) and death (ambiguous.) There follows regional Mexican that downpitches the gender out of its narration, a torchy bossa death threat, neo-reggaeton stomping over those who’d dare to critique her tetas, even 42 seconds of “A Day in the Life” atonal orchestral hullabaloo. While she may never be as focused as she was in 2015, the music’s deep and the emotions are resonant, so I can see why people who think there was more than one great ’90s trip-hop album might hold this up with her absolute peak. Me, I’d prefer she threw in a few more formally old school/lyrically 21st century jams like “Pornocracia”, which sounds Cuban even when some guy’s muttering in Italian about sperm addiction. But she should, and will, do what she wants.

Grade: A MINUS (“NO+SAD”, “Tenochtitlán”, “Pornocracia”)

Li’l Andy: The Complete Recordings of Hezekiah Procter 1925-1930 (2022)

An edifying gimmick. Procter, a pioneering and forgotten country singer/bandleader/carny and also a fictional character, had a brief, varied career that included promotional jingles, a celebration of motor-mania, and a fake race record; Harry Smith disciples will enjoy playing spot the inspiration. Songs first hit the ear in magnetic wire recordings (made electrically, nobody here’s a masochist); most reappear as caught on anachronistic reel-to-reel tape, if you want to study how sound quality affects our reception of music or if you’re a wuss. Andy and his fellow archaists lovingly reproduce old-time sounds down to the tuba oompahing out the bottom end. That the songs are good is a bonus. “In a Gingham Dress” is ripe for some Carolina Chocolate Drop to make their own. “Jennie Blythe” is a distanced murder ballad (it’s the singer’s brother who throws the hussy into the river before offing himself), which is for the best. The “Lovesick Blues” cover shows that he and his band have studied hard, and that they’re pretty funny.

Grade: B PLUS (“In a Gingham Dress”, “Jennie Blythe”, “In the Roebuck Catalogue”)

Lauren Alaina: Unlocked EP

I’d thought “it’s okay” about every previous Alaina single I heard, but excepting opening booze-rocker “Walk in the Bar” (it’s okay) this all hits the mark, starting with the post-booze honky-tonker “Hangovers”. “Don’t Judge a Woman” is old-school country womanism (none of the f-word, please); the mother sticking with him for the kids and the divorcée each have their reasons. “Smaller the Town” recognizes that living in a tiny rural community sucks, at least in the specific circumstance of a break-up when there’s only one bar to go to. “Like Her” is her most affecting vocal performance, expressing an intelligent (non-pejorative) kind of pain. On the closing “Thicc as Thieves”, she and Lainey Wilson claim to be thic(c)ker than their accents, molasses, and the Louisiana air; somehow tae bo comes up. Absurdly fun, it peaked at number 54 on country radio.

Grade: B PLUS (“Thicc as Thieves”, “Like Her”, “Don’t Judge a Woman”)

Parchman Prison Prayer: Some Mississippi Sunday Morning

Producer Ian Brennan, responsible for 2015’s Zomba Prison Project, moves on to Mississippi State Prison in a project three years in the making, recording inmates Black and White, often a cappella, sometimes accompanied by simple instrumentation. There are some uncanny voices, none more so than that of M. Palmer (age 60), who drones a low D that Brennan, in a rare moment of intervention, envelops in cavernous echo. Robinson (age 33) adds some spoken word not dissimilar in context to “Mama Tried”; more often, the relationship between the gospel material and the prisoners’ circumstances is left implicit. M. Kyles (age 52) comes close to making the subtext text when in a brittle tenor he explains the power of Jesus to “break every chain”. The grade is more beside the point than usual; what matters is it’s deeply moving.

Grade: B PLUS (“Break Every Chain”, “Solve My Need”, “Lay My Burden Down”)